Full text of "Percy Bysshe Shelley: A Monograph"
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
H. S. SALT
CHAPTER XIII.
"COB CORDIUM"
After ten days of cruel suspense, two
bodies were cast up by the sea on the
coast between Pisa and Spezzia, and
were identified as those of Shelley and
Williams. The Italian quarantine laws
for the prevention of plague being most
strictly enforced, the bodies were at
once buried in the sands, — in those very
sands over which Shelley had but lately
ridden in company with Byron and
other Mends, — until arrangements had
been made with the authorities at
Florence for their disinterment and
cremation. This ceremony took place
on the 15th and 16th of August, the
body of Williams being burned on the
former day, and that of Shelley on
the latter, in the presence of numerous
spectators, among whom were Byron,
Leigh Hunt, and Trelawny.
It was a scene that impressed itself
ineffaoeably on the memory of those
who witnessed it — the vast expanse of
yellow sand, unbroken by sign of human
habitation ; the blue and cloudless sky ;
the sea calm and smiling; the distant
outline of marble-crested Apennines ;
and, in the centre of the group of by-standers, the fierce flame that rose
from the funeral-pile, quivering with
extraordinary clearness from the frankincense, oil, and wine that were plentifully poured over it, wliile close above,
in the tremulous and glassy atmosphere,
a solitary curlew wheeled and circled
with strange pertinacity, "One might
have expected," said Leigh Hunt, " a
sun-bright countenance to look out of
the flame, coming once more before it
departed, to thank the friends who had
done their duty". There was, indeed,
something in the nature of the wild
scene and the pagan ceremony that was
appropriate to the obsequies of one who
was himself a Greek in his instinctive
reverence for the elemental purity of
sea and fire.
It was Trelawny who had undertaken
and faithfully discharged the duty of
conducting the search for the bodies
of Shelley and Williams, and of carrying the news to the two widows. It
was he, too, who, at the end of the cremation, snatched Shelley's heart, which
remained unconsumed, from the flames,
and collected the ashes in a coffer, in
order that they might be buried at
Rome in the same Protestant burying-place where Shelley's child, William,
had been laid — a spot which Shelley
had long before described as "the
most beautiftil and solemn cemetery''
he ever beheld. To Leigh Hunt belongs the honour of having suggested
the inscription on the tombstone of the
words Cor Cordium — a perfect tribute of
reverence and affection to the memory
of that heart of hearts, whose over-mastering passion, the source of all its
strength and all its weakness, had been
the love of humankind.
Nor was it only Trelawny and Hunt
and Byron who thus gave proof of their
respect for the dead. A week after the
burning of the bodies, the lonely house
at Lerici, now unfurnished and deserted
by its former inhabitants, was visited
by a solitary traveller, who had turned
out of his course, as he journeyed from
Pisa to Genoa, to perform this last act
of melancholy pilgrimage. It was "poor Tom Medwin," as Shelley had
called him, who, poetaster and dilettante
though he was, could yet feel keenly
the supreme sadness of gazing on those
empty and silent rooms that had so
lately been filled with the voices of life
and happiness, and of standing on the
seaward-facing terrace where Shelley
had so often listened with delight to
Jane Williams's simple melodies. As
he passed through the rude entrance-hall on the ground floor, Medwin noticed oars and fragments of spars lying
scattered in confusion, and among them
the broken frame of Shelley's favourite
skif, destined never again to find so
venturesome a pilot.
And where, meantime, was the
Ariel herself? She was discovered
by some sailors, employed by Trelawny
for that purpose, sunk in ten or fifteen
fathoms of water, about two miles off
the coast, and being raised in the following September, was found to have
her gunwale stove in, as if she had been
run down by an Italian felucca during
the squall ; whence arose the suspicion,
which has never been satisfactorily
proved or disproved, that there was an
intent to plunder the vessel of some
money which was known to be on
board. Having been repaired and
rigged afresh, the Ariel was again
sent to sea, but she proved unseaworthy and a second time suffered
shipwreck. "Her shattered planks,"
wrote Mrs. Shelley in 1839, " now lie
rotting on the shore of one of the Ionian
islands on which she was wrecked."
Strange that the Ariels existence should
have ended on one of those very Greek
islands to which Shelley's fancy had so
often been attracted as a possible home
and place of refuge from the calamities
that beset him.
For a year after her husband's death,
Mary Shelley remained in Italy, unable
to tear herself away from the land of
their adoption, in spite of the many
painful memories it awakened. In all
the records of fact and fiction it would
be difficult to find anything more truly
pathetic and heart-rending than the
published extracts from the journal she
kept during those first dreary months
of bereavement and solitude. The
thought and image of Shelley were
ever present to her mind; now it was
the tone of Byron's voice that, by sheer
force of old association, would make
her listen for fhat other voice which,
when Byron spoke, had ever been wont
to reply; now, as she mused and read
in a fit of deep abstraction, it was
Shelley himself who seemed to call
her, as a sudden voice cried "Mary!"
The sense of utter loneliness was only
relieved by the confident expectation
of hereafter rejoining, in another existence, that swift and gentle soul, who,
in this earthly prison-house, had been
like a caged spirit, "an elemental being,
enshrined in a frail image." But this
desire for death was not yet to be
gratified ; there was first a long course
of widowhood to be bravely encountered and lived through; her aged
father to be cheered and tended; her
child to be educated ; and, most sacred
duty of all, her husband's writings to
be collected, edited, and given to the
world.
Meanwhile, in stolid contrast to these
shifting scenes of life and death, giief
and pleasure, rapturous aspiration and
heavy despondency, Sir Timothy Shelley,
now an old man of seventy years of age,
still lived on, as stem and unyielding
as ever. Eton, Oxford, London, Edinburgh, Ireland, Wales, Switzerland,
Marlow, Venice, Naples, Florence, Pisa,
Spezzia, and Rome — these were the
places at which were enacted the
strangest events of that strange drama
of a lifetime, that "miracle of thirty
years," of which the secret and motive
power were love; but Field Place still
remained as it had been when its doors
were first closed against the youthful
offender who, by his reprehensible thirst
for knowledge, had incurred the anger
of the learned men entrusted with his
religious and intellectual education.
Eleven years had now passed since Sir
Timothy, writing to the father of
Shelley's college friend and fellow
sufferer, had insisted on the necessity
of keeping "my young man" and "your young man" apart. And now "my young man" had run a desperate
and erratic career, in which a few misguided people affected to see a subject
for interest and approval, but which
had brought down on him the unsparing
condemnation of the Lord Chancellor,
the Quarterly Review, and all that England possessed of wealth, orthodoxy,
and respectability.
The dishonour to Field Place was
deep and indelible; there was one
thing, however, which was still within
Sir Timothy Shelley's power, as it was
clearly his duty, to do. He could take
advantage of his control of the purse
to forbid his son's widow writing a life
of the poet, and thus further disgracing
the Shelley family by the publication of
deeds which it was far wiser to consign
to a charitable f orgetfulness. Moreover,
that an innocent child might not suffer
for the offences of guilty parents. Sir
Timothy offered to undertake the maintenance of his infant grandson, on condition that he was wholly taken from his mother's charge; but this offer, it
is needless to say, was refused by Mary Shelley. "Why, I live only to keep
him from their hands," was the entry
in her journal.
So Sir Timothy Shelley, by no means
breathing reconciliation, lived on till he
had completed his ninetieth year, a life
three times the length of that of his
undutiful son ; and when he died, no Cot Cordium but a flattering inscription of the conventional kind was set
to blazen his virtues on the walls of
Horsham Church. It may be, however,
that those who thoughtfully ponder the
contrast between these two lives, and
the lessons conveyed by each, will see
in the contrast a striking instance of
the truth of an old poet's words : —
''Circles are praised, not that abound
In largeness, but the exactly round;
So life we praise that does excel
Not in much, time, but living well."
Chapter 14 | Index
